Consumer Council says over 20,000 alerted of data breach

25-09-2023 10:21 HKT

Hong Kong’s Consumer Council chief said on Monday that, over the past two days, around 25,000 notices had been sent to people believed to be affected in a recent data breach, with another 1,600 who previously participated in a voting event alerted of the incident.

Her comments came after a cyberattack against its computer system last week, with 80 percent of their systems damaged, along with a personal data breach.

Sensitive data including the HKID numbers of current and former staff, and their family members, and credit card information for around 8,000 subscribers of the council’s monthly CHOICE magazine, are potentially at risk, the council said last week.

The council’s chief executive, Gilly Wong Fung-han, told a radio program this morning that part of their computer system is now back online, but services related to the handling of complaints may still be delayed.

She said the watchdog had received hundreds of inquiries from subscribers of the monthly CHOICE magazine, with the subscribers hoping to learn about whether their credit card information was at risk and whether they have to unsubscribe from it.

Wong said some of the information was stored in systems yet to be put back online and will take time for them to check, adding that they will notified the subscribers of the progress.